


The mirror watches

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-21
Updated: 2005-08-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Meg-centric fic, with a touch of Raoul, Phantom and Christine love. Meg's plotting does not go unnoticed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The mirror watches

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mary

 

 

 

 

Meg Giry stepped up to the barre, a frown on her face.

She'd watched her best friend, Christine Daa, leave earlier with the Vicomte de Changy. She'd hidden in the shadows as Raoul, the Vicomte, took Christine's hand in his own and promised her a world of spun glass.

Meg frowned at the mirror in front of her and wondered why she could not garner such promises from a man the likes of Raoul.

She slid down to the floor, her stocking-covered knees brushing the cold glass of the mirror. She did not want to betray her friend, but she had no other choice. There would be other chances for Christine, but for Meg, for Meg ...

From the other side of the mirror, a shadow watched and waited.

* * *

The dormitory where the corps de ballet slept was quiet and cold and dark.

Meg slipped from the bed, not bothering to grab a wrap or slip shoes on her feet. She'd heard Christine crawl into her bed moments earlier, but she had not heard Raoul's carriage drive away.

Perhaps there was still time.

She rushed down the long, winding staircase, not bothering to stop when a splinter embedded itself into her palm, and stepped out into the cold night.

Raoul stood, petting his horse and speaking to it quietly. The moonlight threw his features into sharp relief, and Meg wished, not for the first time, that she could simply will him into loving her.

Christine was her friend; her best friend. But this was not about friendship.

She closed the space between them in mere moments, and she stood, silently, waiting for him to sense her there.

After a few moments he turned; his long blond hair falling in a cascade over his fine features, and Meg reached up a hand to tuck the wayward strands behind his ears.

"Meg? You should not be out here. You will catch your death." Raoul's voice was quiet, and he glanced around the courtyard guiltily, as if afraid of being caught.

"Well then, perhaps we should go indoors, oui? " Meg ran her hand over Raoul's jaw and tilted her head in what she knew was a beguiling manner. She could almost feel the moment Raoul began to melt beneath her fingertips.

"Very well, but not here. Please, allow me to help you into the carriage."

Meg lifted the hem of her long, white nightgown and allowed Raoul to help her up onto the soft, plush seat of the closed carriage. She ran her fingers over the thickly embroidered fabric as Raoul whispered instructions to the driver and climbed in alongside her.

She twisted a strand of her waist-length blonde hair between her fingers and looked out through the window. The Paris night was lovely, she knew, for those indoors with warm hearths and thick walls. But for ballet girls long past their prime, the night held only nightmares.

Meg was nowhere near being past her prime. Not yet. She was, as her mother often told her, at the peak of her bloom. But eventually, one day, not too long in the future, she would wilt. Her best chance at finding hearth and home was now, while her hair still shimmered and her body was still soft and firm.

And the man sitting quietly beside her was her best chance.

Meg placed her hand on Raoul's knee, her voice whisper quiet. "There is a man."

Raoul placed his hand over Meg's and his grip was firm and warm and reassuring. "A man?"

"Yes, Christine, she speaks to a man. He visits her in room. I have heard them."

Raoul turned his head to look out the window, his lips pursed. "She says he is her tutor."

Meg shook her head. "Non, he is not a tutor. I have heard them together. He loves her, Monsieur."

Raoul sighed deeply and Meg extricated her hand from his. She pulled the blinds closed on the carriage windows, reveling in the warm, dark nothing of the interior.

Slowly, she moved to straddle the Vicomte's thighs, her nightgown riding up, baring her. She sat, silent and still for a long moment, waiting.

Meg knew men. She knew that he would reach out, would touch her, would take what she had to offer. She knew. He'd done so countless times in the past few weeks, and he would do so again. All she had to do, was wait.

And when his hands gripped her thighs, and he whispered _Christine_ hot and thick against her neck, she simply closed her eyes and ignore the sting of tears rolling down her cheeks.

* * *

Meg performed a perfect pirouette, ignoring the sharp tap of her mother's cane on the floor. She often wondered how her mother had ended up here, still, after all these years. A ballet matron, still in the same placed she'd begun all those years before, still alone and nothing in the world.

A sound above Meg's head caused her to look up into the theater's rafters, and there she saw a shadow. A shadow covered in black silk. The Opera Ghost. Christine's visitor. Christine's lover.

Meg snuck off the stage unnoticed and snuck off to her practice mirror, to her barre, and she sat on the floor, close to the glass, her stocking-covered knees pressed against the reflective surface. He would come; she knew he would.

See, Meg _did_ know men.

"We can help each other, you and I." Her voice rang clear in the empty practice room, and she ran a fingertip over the glass as she waited.

"What makes you think that I require your help, child?"

His voice was not at all what Meg expected; nothing like she was accustomed to hearing of him, muted through the walls of Christine's dressing room. Rather, it was warm, intoxicating and soothing.

"I never said that you required my help, Monsieur. Simply that I was willing to offer it."

The silence from the other side of the glass frightened her. She had been so sure that he would agree; that he help her win the Vicomte.

Desperately, she lowered the thin, white straps of her bodice, letting them fall, baring herself from the waist up. Whatever was on the other side of that mirror was a man. And all men-

"Cover yourself."

The Opera Ghost's voice was harsh and held none of the warmth it had a second earlier. Meg knew that tone; it was the tone of a man trying to control himself, trying to rein himself in. A man destined to fail.

She stood and pushed the remainder of her dancing costume off, standing naked before the mirror, hands firmly gripping the barre.

There was a flurry of movement, the lights were doused, the room shrouded in darkness, and Meg found herself wrapped in the heavy black silk of a cloak. The Opera Ghost, no, the man standing in front of her, his face in the darkest of shadows.

She reached out a hand, and he stepped back. "You do not want me? Is it because I am not _her_? Because I am not Christine?"

The man reached a trembling hand out slowly, placing it on Meg's cheek. "This is not the way, little Meg Giry. You are better than this."

Meg looked in the vicinity of where his face would be. "You will not help me, then?"

"I am helping you."

And then he was gone.

* * *

Meg sat on the floor of the darkened practice room for hours. And then, she sat there for hours more.

Christine ran in, a swirl of red cloak twirling around her, brandishing an engagement ring given to her by the Vicomte. Meg smiled and laughed and congratulated, eyes dull and dead all the while, black cloak wrapped tight around her thin shoulders.

Once Christine left, Meg scooted up against the mirror, pressing her black-silk covered knees against the cold glass. "I love her, also, you know."

From the other side of the mirror, a shadow watched and waited.

 

 

 


End file.
